The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

THE PLP’s claim they were not opposed to the 2002 women’s rights referendum, but rather to the process adopted, is a “convenient rewriting of history”, FNM Chairman Darron Cash said last night.

He accused the PLP of “setting back the cause of equality for women by more than a decade” because they could not “pass up such a great political opportunity to give the FNM a black eye”.

Mr Cash was responding to comments by Social Services Minister Melanie Griffin, who told The Tribune on Tuesday: “The PLP was never opposed to the referendum itself. The failure of the referendum was certainly not a rejection by the Bahamian people of the content. The failure was due to the process.

“The people of the Bahamas decided that the process was rushed and because it was coming – what? – three months before an election. It was in a highly charged political season.”

Ten years after that referendum was voted down by the public, it was announced on Monday that a June 2013 referendum will see the removal of all forms of discrimination against women.

At present, Bahamian women are legally inferior to men in various ways, most prominently with regard to the right to transfer citizenship to their children.

The difference with this up-coming referendum, Mrs Griffin said, is that it will be “outside of the silly season” and has the consensus of both Houses of Parliament and “both sides of the divide”.

In a statement released to the press, Mr Cash said: “Melanie Griffin’s suggestion that the PLP was not opposed to the women’s rights referendum presented to the people by the FNM government in 2002 but that the PLP was only opposed to the rushed process, is a convenient rewriting of history.”

With regards to the referendum coming during a “highly charged political season,” it was only a politically charged season because the PLP made it one, the party chairman said.

“All of the PLP parliamentarians in the House of Assembly and the Senate voted with the FNM for all the Bills,” he continued.

“They understood the political and social significance of what the FNM was attempting to do, and they knew the issue rose far above partisan politics. However, they could not help themselves.”

After voting in Parliament, the PLP, including Mrs Griffin “who at the time sat in the Senate across from me,” Mr Cash said, saw a political opportunity and decided to “shamelessly” exploit it.

“The PLP knew that the social consequence and impact of the amendment to give women equal rights were clear and beyond dispute, but they could not pass up such a great political opportunity to give the FNM a black eye,” Mr Cash said.

“In 2002 there was in fact, to use (Mrs Griffin’s) words, a consensus of both Houses of Parliament and both sides of the divide. They all voted for the referendum Bills. Not one of them voted no. Not one. But, they permitted political opportunism to override their better judgements,” Mr Cash said, adding that history “will not be kind” to them.

“Today, they are moving at 500 miles per hour to push the gambling scheme down the throats of the Bahamian people. The Prime Minister’s own backpeddling speaks to the failures of ‘the process’. The question for her to consider is this, what constitutes more of a rushed job – six months or six weeks?”